A voice of informed reason has long been needed at Stonehenge, where an apparently undeniable solar alignment and a simple symmetric layout has spurred dubious and confusing claims of ancient computers, mathematical schemes, calendars and orientations with sun, moon, stars and planets. The book was launched at the National Space Centre in Leicester, where Ruggles is emeritus professor of archaeoastronomy at the university. During her career at English Heritage/Historic England, Chadburn was for many years lead adviser for the Stonehenge and Avebury World Heritage Site. Unlike any previous title on the subject, then, it boasts authors with relevant expertise in both astronomy and archaeology. Does it deliver?
The question begs another: who is it for? Its attractive package, in full colour throughout, suggests it aims at a wide readership. This is belied, however, by its structure, which features a dense text, many explanatory boxes and tables, long endnotes, a glossary covering ‘accuracy’ through ‘lunistice’ to ‘zenith’ (and further details at a dedicated website) and a good bibliography and index. Technical explanations, which abound, are not always easy to follow. This is not a book to read on the beach.
It does, however, pack in a great deal of information and wisdom. With over a hundred illustrations (which often comprise two or three photos or diagrams), it covers astronomy, Stonehenge and what shows at the monument and in the contemporary landscape as probable intentional nods to the sun and other celestial bodies. It opens with ‘Humans and the heavens’, a brief survey of engagements with the night sky around the world. Two chapters on archaeoastronomy and the significance of orientation are followed by two on Stonehenge (its landscape and bearings), one on the nearby monuments of Woodhenge and Durrington Walls, three exploring the nature and meaning of identified alignments (including their significance today) and two on the sky and beliefs at Stonehenge and beyond.
What do we learn? The solstice alignments at Stonehenge were real, on the rising sun in midsummer and (probably more important at the time) the setting sun at midwinter. The authors are sceptical about most proposed moon alignments, finding the idea that the site location was chosen for a coincidence of lunar and solar effects ‘frankly absurd’. Here, they write, the ‘most compelling evidence’ is for a sighting on the southernmost moonrise, which occurred over a cluster of cremation burials. This is becoming part of Stonehenge’s astronomical folklore, but it has little to support it. The burials were found under almost the only part of the enclosing circular bank that has been excavated: whether or not there were more elsewhere is unknown. The alignment is on an archaeological trench.
Useful radiocarbon dates obtained as part of the authors’ project, it is said, indicate that Woodhenge was contemporary with the major megalithic phase at Stonehenge – though the latter’s still imprecise dating might suggest it to be a little younger. The four inner rings of posts at Woodhenge were also aligned on the solstice; two further rings and an earthwork around them (the latter added after two centuries) were not. At Durrington Walls, a short earthwork avenue indicated the summer solstice sunset, and in the other direction, but less convincingly, the midwinter sunrise. There were no visible equinox alignments.
The necessary compromise between getting everything onto the page and the small format of the book has arguably been resolved the wrong side of too much detail. In that detail, however, there is much to stimulate the reader prepared to put the work in. Are ethnoastronomy and archaeoastronomy two forms of ‘cultural astronomy’, as the authors propose, or do they differ in what we can know? In living societies we see the sky as an arena for stories in which precise measurements play little part. We read of an ethnic group in Ethiopia, for example, who were said to have a solar calendar in which the sun itself could arrive early or late, and months were randomly omitted.
In contrast, archaeology can only identify astronomical interest when it shows as a statistically provable component of a physical landscape. That we cannot now see a clear concern with the moon at Stonehenge does not mean there never was one. On the other hand, the knowledge that the sun did matter tells us nothing about why or how. There is an understandable desire to seek explanations for ancient phenomena in the tangible evidence of alignments and a sky that looks more or less the same to us as it did to people thousands of years ago, but was the solstice interest at Stonehenge a gesture from a political complex who simply wished to be seen to control the sun? Or was it a small part of a great celestial package of myths, beliefs and actions holding meanings for a range of communities? If there are answers to such questions, we will find them in the ground, not the sky. That we can ask them, however, is a gift of studies such as this.
